Dunleavy, AG cleared themselves for free legal help in ethics cases by changing regulation; Legislature tries to stop it by law
Despite unanimous public opposition, the Dunleavy administration adopted regulations in late 2023 to allow the governor, attorney general and lieutenant governor to get free legal help from the Department of Law when ethics violations are alleged.
This is a new benefit, one that is denied to other state employees.
Smart lawyers say it is unconstitutional and that the governor and AG Tregarrick Taylor do not have the power to give each other the gift of free legal help.
Other state employees are expected to pay for their own defense in ethics cases and qualify for reimbursement from the state when they demonstrate that the ethics charges are bogus.
As I’ve pointed out here before, the scratch-each-other’s-back conflict of interest is obvious and unaddressed.
The AG will always be inclined to sign off on free legal help for the governor or lieutenant governor, regardless of circumstances. Likewise, the governor will want to bestow free legal help on the AG, who serves at the pleasure of the governor.
A simple measure advancing in the Legislature, Senate Bill 165, would overturn the regulations enacted by Taylor.
The next public hearing on the measure is set for Friday at 1:30 p.m. in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The self-serving plan for mutual legal aid first surfaced in 2019 when Kevin Clarkson was the AG.
A 2019 legislative legal opinion concluded that the idea of state officials bestowing free legal help on each other was a violation of state law and unconstitutional. That should have been the end of this.
This letter from three legislators in 2019 provides a strong case for why this regulation change should have been stopped. Under existing rules, state employees who are exonerated from ethics complaints can get reimbursement for their costs.
There were 321 pages of public opposition the first time around in 2019-2020. Here are those comments.
Taylor was a deputy to Clarkson in 2019. He and Clarkson refused to reveal exactly who decided these regulations were needed.
“The regulations were proposed to address an identified need—the attorney general instructed the Department of Law to propose the amendments,” Taylor wrote in 2019.
The closest that anyone in Dunleavy’s administration has come to explaining this is the recent comment by one of Taylor’s deputies regarding the “possible weaponization” of the ethics process.
The unanimous public opposition and a proposed bill to stop the mutual aid society combined to kill the first attempt in February 2020, when the recall was still a serious threat to Dunleavy’s political survival.
In 2023, the Dunleavy administration resurrected the mutual aid society when no one was looking.
Rather than trying to amend the state ethics law through legislative action, they opted to sneak this past the public through a regulation change with no public hearings.
For the second time, all the public comments were opposed. Here are those comments.
The Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act says “that a fair and open government requires that executive branch public officers conduct the public's business in a manner that preserves the integrity of the governmental process and avoids conflicts of interest . . .”
Former Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth testified March 22 that the regulations are illegal and that the governor and attorney general should be treated like any other state employee.
That would comply with the AG opinion issued August 5, 2009 by former AG Dan Sullivan, who said defending an individual state official would create an “unacceptable conflict” for the Department of Law.
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